In recent years, many corporations have expanded business overseas as a result of economic globalization. Each bank has offices in Asia, Oceania, United States, Europe, and the like in order to support corporations expanding business overseas.
The forms of bank financing include corporate finance in which a particular corporation is financed and project finance in which a cash flow of a particular project is analyzed to predict revenues so as to provide financing using an asset value of the project as collateral. In particular, for project finance in which not only domestic corporations but also a plurality of overseas corporations are involved, a bank needs to make credit decisions by verifying credit risks of borrowers, sponsors (corporations that sponsor a specific purpose company for the project), off-takers (corporations that purchase products resulting from the project), and the like (hereinafter collectively referred to as “related parties”). For credit decisions for financing for a global corporation with operations in plurality of countries, bank employees in a plurality of offices within a bank need to share information.
However, laws and regulations for handling of customer information vary among countries. Each overseas branch needs to manage customer information while complying with the laws and regulations of that country. Thus, much of the information handled is managed on a branch-by-branch basis, and information sharing among branches may be insufficient. For example, for the credit decisions as described above, comprehensive decisions need to be made based on a client's management, the contents of the client's business, the client's financial situation, and the client's credit situation. However, in some cases, information sharing among offices located in a plurality of countries may be insufficient.
Moreover, banks are corporations with a very high public nature and are desired to adhere not only to laws and regulations but also to social norms and business ethics. In particular, for megabanks, special attention is desired to be paid to compliances, and improving an effective compliance organizational structure is essential. For example, in Japan, in terms of internal control and protection of personal information, much attention is desired to be paid to handling of highly confidential documents inside banks. In particular, megabanks with operations in a plurality of countries are desired to give more attention due to variations, among the countries, in the contents and criteria of laws to be observed.
Moreover, various types of information are handled by banks, and thus, attention needs to be paid to access to insider information. For example, if M&A information is accessible before being publicly available, insider trading may be attempted. Shared information needs to be partitioned into parts so that each part can be set to be public/private.
It is very useful for a bank having offices in a plurality of countries to construct a system that enables bank employees in the offices to share information possessed by the offices. None of conventional systems available to the bank employees in all the offices allow appropriate access control to be performed while complying with laws and regulations that vary among the countries, thus enabling appropriate information to be disclosed to appropriate persons.
Thus, an object of the present invention is to allow bank employees in offices of a bank with operations in a plurality of countries to share information and to prevent an unauthorized bank employee to access the shared information without violating laws and regulations in the countries.